NAVIGATION, MOVEMENT TECHNIQUES AND RANGES (MS EXCEL)

Navigation and Movement Techniques
To move to a specific cell or range, you can use the mouse, the menu, or the keyboard.

The sheet tabs are located at the bottom of the worksheet. Click on the sheet tab of your choice to view it contents. This worksheet contains formulas that calculate how much of each month’s payment loan interest is and how much is principal. When you drag the scroll box, scroll tips appear beside the scroll bar. These tips indicate which row will be at the top of your screen when you release the mouse button. Use the Page Down key to scroll one screen’s worth of information at a time. Pressing the Control and Home keys at the same tim will activate cell A1 in the current sheet. Press the Page Down key.

The Go To dialog box can be used to activate a particular cell on the worksheet. Choose Edit, Go To.  Type d70  and press the Enter key. We’ve activated cell D70. This cell contains a formula that adds the interest information for months 1 through 60. Now press the Control + Home key combination to return to the top of the worksheet.

When a worksheet is too large to fit on the screen, you can use the Windo, Freeze Panes command to “lock” certain rows or columns of information on the screen while you scroll through the rest of the worksheet.

Select cell A8.    Choose window, Freeze Panes.   Press the Page Down key.Because you used the Window, Freeze Panes command, everything above cell A8 is “frozen” on the screen. Now, we’ll return the worksheet to its previous state.Choose Window, Unfreeze Panes.

When you have more than one file open at once, you can use the window menu to access the other open files. Let’s switch to the My Sales Report file.
Choose Window, My Sales Report.

Next, we’ll close the two open files. When we close the My Sales Report file, the other open file, Loan Workbook, will become visible.
Choose File, Close.   Choose File, Close.     Click on No.
when you closed the second file, your changes were not saved. No workbooks are open. Now, let’s create a workbook by using the New button on the toolbar. Click on the New button. (A new worksheet has been created in the Excel application window).

Working with Ranges
A range is a group of adjacent cells in a worksheet. To select a range, you can use the mouse or the keyboard. Let’s try selecting a range by using each of these methods.

Place the mouse pointer in the center of cell B3. Press and hold the left mouse button. Drag down until cell B4 is highlighted; release the mouse button. Both cells B3 and B4 are selected. This is a small rang3e in which cell B3 is the active cell. The active cell in a range appears white. If you were to type when a range was selected, the active cell would receive the keystrokes. By clicking away from a range, you deselect it. Click on the A1. Now try selecting a range by using the keyboard. Select cell B4 by placing the mous4e pointer in the center of cell B4 and clicking. Cell B4 is the upper-left corner of the range. Now you need to indentify the lower-right corner of the range to complete the range selection. Place the mouse pointer over cell F5, hold down the Shift key, and click on cell F5.

Selecting the range that will contain the sales data for Sweet and Wilson. Use either selection method to select the range C10:E11. Observe that the active cell is C10. You can change the position of the active cell within a selected range by using the Enter key, the Tab key, and the Shift key. Press the Enter key. Press the Tab key. If you press the shift key, you can reverse the selection you made by using the Enter key or the Tab key. Hold down Shift  and press the Tab key. The active cell moved from cell D11 to cell C11. Hold down Shift and press the Enter key. The active cell has moved from cell C11 to cell C10.

Now let’s see what happens when the active cell is the last cell in the selected range. Press the Enter key five times to make cell E11 the active cell. Press the Enter key.
Ranges are useful when you need to enter data. Let’s add the sales data for Sweet and Wilson. Cell C10 is the active cell. Type 120 and press the Enter key.(the value 120 has been stored in cell C10 and the active cell has moved to cell C11). Type 213 and press the Enter key. The value 213 has been stored in cell C11, and the active cell is now D10. Enter the following numbers:
In cell D10: 134,  In cell D11: 98,  In cell E10: 201, In cell E11: 117

Once you enter the last number, the active cell returns to cell C10 in the upper-left corner of the selected range. To deselect the range, you can click on any cell. Click on cell B4 to deselect the range.

In our next lesson you will learn how to work with Function. click to see what FUNCTION means.